© Reuters.
Investing.com – SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has once again taken aim at the cryptocurrency industry, criticizing what he perceives as the disproportionate power wielded in the sector by cryptocurrency exchanges. centralized currency. While warning of the danger of centralization in traditional finance, he also made a point of attacking the crypto industry.
“We have even seen centralization in the crypto market, which was founded on the idea of decentralization. This area actually has a significant concentration among middlemen in the middle of the market. ‘scale, network effects and access to valuable data’.
The SEC Chairman added, with an apparent allusion to the blockchain, that while new technologies can often help create new forms of economic competition and dislodge established players, centralization is quickly finding a way to re-establish itself in companies. new sectors.
“Although technological innovations repeatedly disrupt established business models, centralization always tends to reappear.”
It should be noted that federal agencies are taking steps to curb certain decentralized components of crypto and DeFi.
In August, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned mixer Tornado Cash and blacklisted numerous wallet addresses associated with the service. The Treasury claims the service facilitated money laundering and aided terrorist groups.
Circle, the originator of the USDC stablecoin, actively complied with the Tornado Cash sanctions, freezing all USDC in wallets blacklisted by OFAC. Company co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire lamented that the federal government forced his hand and made Circle a less decentralized company against his will.
The Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), meanwhile, is engaged in an unprecedented lawsuit against a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), in which all members of the DAO would be held responsible for the consequences of all votes cast at CAD scale. This lawsuit, if successful, could see DAOs dismissed as an alternative to a centralized corporate structure for cryptocurrency projects.